Erebus evaluating Mercedes wild card outings

The Erebus Motorsport Mercedes-AMG E63 could return to the Supercars grid for the 2019 season with the team evaluating possible wild card outings for the car.

Having joined the grid back in 2013, the team ran the Mercedes for three seasons before electing to switch to Holden Commodores at the start of 2016 – with the Mercedes having been parked up ever since.

However, the car last raced by Will Davison in the 2015 season finale in Sydney will return to action this week during testing at Winton Raceway, where the car will run limited laps in the hands of David Reynolds alongside the team’s two Holdens.

The Mercedes could then appear in Super2 next season with Luke Youlden or compete in the main Supercars series in some of the wild card events.

“Luke has some potential plans for 2019 and asked us if we would be interested in running the E63,” team CEO Barry Ryan told the official Supercars website. “Tomorrow [Tuesday] will be an opportunity to understand where the car is at performance-wise, to replicate our current set-up in the E63 and see what potential it has.

“We’ve been talking for a year or two about getting it going and maybe doing ride days with it, but Luke got us fired up to put more serious thought into it. He’s definitely got the potential to run it next year with a sponsor, which is good.

“It’s our only option to run a Super2 entry or a wild card, we don’t have cars sitting around doing nothing, apart from the E63.

“The car pretty much hadn’t been touched since the end of 2015, [but] chassis-wise and suspension-wise it’s the same (as the Commodores), so there’s no reason that won’t be right. It’s only really the aero package and the way the engine delivers its power, whether it works with the way we set up our suspension.”